pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i'm with whiney, i don't really get the point of getting a bunch of ppl to write goop-on-ya-grinch style blurbs to 250 pop and r&b songs everyone already knows and loves. there's almost nothing on this list a young person getting into music wouldn't already know, or couldn't find about from, like, an extremely generic Best of the 90s playlist on Spotify. this form of middlebrow poptimism 2.0 feels extremely played out imho. music writers would benefit from branching out into other types of music

― flopson, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 05:59 (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

thank you for putting into good words what I typed out several times earlier and then deleted as I felt like I was being maybe too much of an asshole

you are free to like or dislike other people's musical tastes, writing, whatever, but it's unmitigated clownshit to claim that people -- many of whom are freelancers who are juggling this with at least one, sometimes multiple other jobs -- are lazy just because they don't enjoy the music you think they should

this list is surely stylistically broader than the previous one too

the 2010 list was horrible

the unspoken thing being that this form of middlebrow poptimism dominates ILM too, both due to individuals' listening habits and the monstrous razor that is poll aggregation hewing off the interesting parts of people's ballots, even if we are thankfully less inclined to write about what these songs 'allowed' 'us' to do or what 'cultural space' they etched out

is this new list stylistically broader? scrolling through it induces a giant feeling of ennui - yeah this is mostly good, but what's the point etc, so many subcultures just completely erased

lists like this and Pitchfork in general feel like the work of school bullies who also happen to be the cool kids

weird sonic youth picks too. 'tunic' and 'kool thing' just feel like "songs sung by kim on goo (the album with the cool cover art)" and not like anyone's particular faves. "bull in the heather" would be a more inspired pick in the same spirit imo

o_O

2010 list has Ice Hockey Hair, so it's better

xp- lol i may be way off. kool thing rocks obv. seems weird to have 2 songs off the same album when dirty, washing machine, experimental jet set are right there tho

yeah those were bizarre picks, even just sonic youth having two tracks place is weird, let alone one of them being a random album cut

the lack of sfa is a real shame yes

that face wasn't directed at any specific comment tbh

2010 list also had a Boredoms song. like, you could maybe try have more of that sort of thing? pretty please?

a 90s list with the same curatorial spirit as the sunday review would be dope

tbf a *real* alfred pick would have been something off 'under the red sky'

― mookieproof

my boo

lists like this and Pitchfork in general feel like the work of school bullies who also happen to be the cool kids

― imago

It is in a sense a relief that in times like these you remain as clueless and myopic as ever.

Picking on the list I don't mind and I expect it; but comparing a considerable portion of the women, people of color, and queer writers to "bullies" makes you sound like a legislator in a conservative state bitching about woke culture.

Was the 2010 list done in the same way? The new one is a straight tally of voters' ballots, right?

i drew no such parallel. any sort of canon affirmation that eschews eclecticism and the avant-garde in favour of pop is essentially the assertion of might-is-right downward-punching in a cultural context no matter who's doing it. 'this is our music, this is what you should like', ad nauseam, and it's always the same rough outline, the same tediously regurgitated content, the same reduction of the vast, mad array of music from a particular era (or range of eras) to a shape of manufactured consent that excludes WHOLE SWATHES of what matters to a lot of people. and while i guess these people don't have to read pitchfork, it sure feels like it's p central to the ILM discourse, and so we have these clashes

and yeah, good to be inclusive. but i would argue this list absolutely isn't that. pitchfork is an elitist organisation that operates by creating for itself a powerful, exclusive brand, and it can use all the identity politics it likes to make itself sound more righteous, but it is ultimately an Authority and it operates From On High. it is the opposite of punk. i am not calling its individual writers bullies, nor am I claiming that they are not discriminated against on the basis of identity in their regular lives, but to my mind, pitchfork itself is the bully and its contributors participate in the bullying. no power is being fought by pitchfork. within its orbit, its power is absolute

taiwo's writings on elite capture feel apposite here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/olufemi-taiwo-identity-politics-elite-capture.html

fight the power came out in 1989

honestly think a lot of the choices on here can be explained by a change in electorate from people who were adults in the 90s to people who were kids. wouldn’t that naturally cause a narrowing of scope towards popular songs remembered fondly and a selection of approved picks from the gen x canon?

“borrowed nostalgia for an unremembered 90s”

Of course Pitchfork is going to publish a consensual list, that's not a shocker. You're just not the audience, ILX is not the audience, the list is fine for young people getting into music who didn't live through the 90s and who want a basecamp. Or casual listeners for a trip down memory lane. You can always branch out of popular music, you don't need pitchfork to take your hand for that, what would the point be. Of course that doesn't diminish the pleasure of bitching about it, I get that.

Johnny Fever put it well when he described the ILM polls as frivolous fun. This isn't different, even if people are paid.

i'm with whiney, i don't really get the point of getting a bunch of ppl to write goop-on-ya-grinch style blurbs to 250 pop and r&b songs everyone already knows and loves. there's almost nothing on this list a young person getting into music wouldn't already know, or couldn't find about from, like, an extremely generic Best of the 90s playlist on Spotify. this form of middlebrow poptimism 2.0 feels extremely played out imho. music writers would benefit from branching out into other types of music

Always had problems with Pitchfork but this list seems so defeated. Like they've given up on having a point of view and are now just indiscriminately flattering a new generation of consumers and assuring them "you're doing great, sweetie." You like singing the 4 Non Blondes song at karaoke? Fine, it's one of the greatest songs of all time.

imago would you contend that pitchfork fought the power in its indie days

No, but at least it was unafraid to make a prat of itself, hence giving Brent DiCrescenzo a gig reviewing major albums. Now everything is sous vide

lists like this and Pitchfork in general feel like the work of school bullies who also happen to be the cool kids

― imago, Wednesday, September 28, 2022 2:18 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol cmon man be serious

I mean, not that that is even preferable - some of BDC's hitjobs were lamentably stupid and even destructive to reputations, but that's because Pitchfork were already, even then, an Authority that punched down at artists. I'm just saying that they were a bit more willing to entertain reviewers' personal critical stances then; it doesn't feel it was as editorialised then; it was a chirpy, quirky zine that gained outsize power way too quickly

Is it even possible to put together a 90s canon? Critical opinions on 50s-80s have seemed relatively fixed for a while now, but 90s onwards seems to be becoming more chaotic rather than more settled.

A couple of the songs do feel like pandering to the Tik Tok generation, but the list still has plenty to offer. We're now as far from the '90s as the '90s were from the Beatles, so that's a lot of bullshit like "What's Up" to catch up with. (And sorry, including a song like "What's Up" feels like something the Eve 6 guy would post on Twitter to troll people).

Breihan's Number Ones column has been hanging in the '90s for the last several months, so I've read some thoughtful takes on a lot of stuff I don't like that have prepared me for this list. But count me among those that just don't get Mariah Carey or her placement at the top, or Bikini Kill in their top 10 slot, either. Both should be on the list somewhere, maybe even more than once, but not there.

lol i may be way off

You weren't.

i am not calling its individual writers bullies, nor am I claiming that they are not discriminated against on the basis of identity in their regular lives, but to my mind, pitchfork itself is the bully and its contributors participate in the bullying.

this is a terrible analogy and you should drop it, jesus christ

“by making a list of r&b bangers you have punched down at boredoms” foh

aaliyah’s “are you that somebody?” would probably be the most agreeable number one pick

old-p4k did a lot of punching down and bullying. I wouldn't mind more pans if they're actually warranted not that they seem to do much these days anyway

the list feels a bit triangulated but it's fairly representative of the tastes of 30-something post-hipsters and probably younger people who like 90s music. thank god we're in a place now where liking nirvana and mariah is just a normal part of liking music and not something that has to be justified

I'd like more diversity and more leftfield picks but the specific editorial pov that has been diluted in this case was an even more boring and narrow one than this

I don't think the pre-90s canons are all that settled but there may be some more consensus on what those decades meant and were about (which is always worth troubling) while the 90s is still being fought over a lot more

for one, it would’ve mollified the rabid contingent of doctor doolittle super fans

self xp lol

I'd love to see a '90s movie list out there that puts "Dr. Doolittle" at number one.

Honestly as soon as this list came out I scrolled up as fast as possible to see if "Are You That Somebody" was at number one, but when I saw it at number 3 (right?) I thought, well, close enough, I'm satisfied.

Or maybe Loveless takes the top spot back from OK Computer.

― MarkoP,

ding ding ding

All zoomers need to know: 80s = "Doolittle." 90s = "Dr. Doolittle."

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/

Punching down & bullying don't make much sense to me as concepts in this context, but that flopson post table quoted is good. I didn't really get the "poptimism 2.0" thesis (though revisiting that thread, Whiney's op is p lucid), but this list clarifies it to some degree.

xp uh oh

violator is about 100 spots too low. and attributed to the wrong year

ok Hole above Nirvana is a strong challops, kudos pitchfork.com

Perhaps more current contributors owe it to themselves as paid influencers to bother listening through the entirety of previous lists before settling on their choices. But they don't, because they're lazy.

― billstevejim, Wednesday, September 28, 2022 2:43 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I logged in just to tell you to fuck off

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Wednesday, September 28, 2022 2:47 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I cannot describe the warm nostalgic glow this exchange gave me but I thank you so much

I'm actually a bit surprised that Liz Phair is as high as she is on both of these lists. For whatever reason, I don't hear as much about that album as I did back in the 2000s.

As I’ve said previously, I like a lot of songs on this list, but there are few surprises, and the poptimism-as-hegemony element to it is real— why do we need this list? Wouldn’t a list of forgotten or poorly remembered grunge or riot grrl bands be more interesting? Is rehashing radio playlists and throwing in an occasional pick from CMJ charts really a good look at a decade? I just don’t think it is! It feels more attuned to algorithms of now than what the decade was actually like.

(Also, I didn’t even realize that the other SY pick was “Kool Thing”—- might be the most irritating song in that record, if they really wanted to pick a non-Thurston track they could have at least picked “Mote,” which is one of Lee’s crowning achievements in that band)

ok Hole above Nirvana is a strong challops

elsewhere maybe but I feel like that's pretty much ilm canon, right? (as it should be.)

yeah I'm not even necessarily disagreeing, just recognizing the annoyance that will cause (I think?). I haven't heard either album in at least 20 years. For nostalgic reasons, I'd prefer to listen to Nirvana myself, but I'd pick In Utero way before Nevermind anyway